


Rising, Gliding

by SegaBarrett



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: M/M, Season 3 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25500217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Walt comes to like the perfect silence he shares with Gale.
Relationships: Gale Boetticher/Walter White
Comments: 9
Kudos: 17
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	Rising, Gliding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [colonel_bastard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colonel_bastard/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I do not own Breaking Bad, and I make no money from this.

There was something beautiful in the way that Gale looked at him. The look of someone who understood the best, appreciated the best. The look of someone who had seen all of the politics and brown-nosing and understood why Walter was never comfortable in that world because hell, why be in it if the respect isn’t there? 

Someone who respected what deserved respect and ignored the rest.

After all, the respect was here, now, all the time and especially in this room, in this lab that dwarfed those of many major industrial companies that Walt had worked for in the past, the kind of place where Walt had been ordered around by the likes of a guy who couldn’t figure out the GC mass spec no matter how many times you explained it to him, or the supervisor who kept insisting that he “coulda had a Ph.D., but I didn’t wanna be away from my family” to anyone who would listen and several people who wouldn’t. 

It was nice to be a king, instead, wasn’t it? Walt was the only person around here giving orders. And if Gale wasn’t Jesse (and as much as he hated to admit it, sometimes he did miss Jesse), it was in all the best ways, the ways that Gale was what Walt once was. Well, almost.

Gale had an odd pliability to him that Walt had never had. Walt had been all rough edges, even though he had figured out ways in which best to hide them. 

When Gale’s eyes twinkled as he recites the last words of “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”, Walt wondered if it would be unnoticed if he threw some water on his face, because he wasn’t sure if he could even concentrate now. Were his eyes a little hazy, or was that just condensation over his glasses? 

“Well,” Walt managed instead, “Let’s get to work.”

***

If this were a different situation – and there were many times in which Walt could picture that it was – he would invite Gale over for dinner. Nothing weird about that, his coworker, an equal, sitting across from him and maybe even meeting Junior and Holly somewhere along the line. An esteemed colleague. A work friend. A parent’s new partner. 

If you stripped away the “illegal” aspect of it all, that was.

Walter was the one who had started “it” as he liked to refer to it – to make it a bit clinical and not the reaction it had been, sodium exploding into a cloud and knocking both of them to the ground with it – after, one quiet day in the lab, he had asked Gale to check the temperature on the settling tank. 

They had passed each other – and Walt wondered if maybe there should be some sort of passing rule in the lab, Walt wondered, so when you got too close you should have to give the other person four seconds’ distance to avoid situations like that. But they had made it over to the tank and craned their heads to look at the temperature setting, and suddenly Walt’s lips had pressed against Gale’s.

It wasn’t like it had never happened before – Walt remembered many nights with Elliot in grad school – but it hadn’t happened recently; the thought hadn’t really crossed his mind.  
It was exciting, a feeling that Walt was trying to live for these days. He felt as if he had spent his first fifty years simply checking boxes and not actually living. 

Then there had been his decision (the one Jesse had called his one to “break bad”, why was Jesse in his mind again? He wouldn’t even begin to know what to make of this), and then everything that followed after it.

His interior monologue cut off as he listened to the way Gale breathed, or stopped breathing for a second, underneath him, and slowly he pulled back to look at him. The gaze that he shot Gale was almost a dare.

“Well,” Gale said, “I don’t really know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything,” Walt told him. 

“We should probably get back to work.” Gale turned his head, ever so slightly, and then stepped over to scoop up his notebook. He flipped it open, looked at a page and sighed, and then fixed his gaze back on Walt.

And then it had been a point of no return.

***

Walt examined himself in the floor-length mirror as he walked back and forth. Someone might have called it a strut – but there was nothing wrong with a little confidence, after all.

Ever since he and Gale had been, well, he would still just call it “working together” if anybody had asked… Walt had begun to notice changes in himself. His skin looked clearer and healthier, and as a few stray hairs sprouted back in his head, they seemed to be dark and not gray.

What a difference the right situation can make! He thought to himself.

Walt found it easy to talk to Gale, primarily because he never seemed to have to stop and explain anything to Gale, who preferred to watch and learn. 

Sometimes he asked questions, but he never was a brick wall or a smirking bureaucrat who allowed Walt’s good advice to go in one ear and out the other – there he was thinking about the old labs again… All those old bosses again.

Although maybe those feelings had cleared away because now, barring Gus, it was Walt who was the boss. But he wouldn’t treat Gale like the others had treated him.

Gale would feel welcome to keep coming back. And, had Gus given Gale a time card, likely he wouldn’t rip it up and throw it in Walt’s face. Not that Walt would know anything about doing that. 

Walt looked into the mirror with a little smirk.

Well, maybe Heisenberg had been there a little bit all along. 

***

“Um, so are you going to spill or just keep looking at me like a cat that ate a canary?”

Walt looked across the card table at Jesse, flipping over a green “1” on to the discard deck. They were sitting in the condo, and Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” piped out from a record player in the corner. Spring. 

“Spill about what, Jesse?” He took off his glasses and cleaned them for a long moment, before replacing them on his face and looking across the table. 

“About you and Captain Nerd.”

“His name is Gale, Jesse. And what about him exactly, would you like to know? Or are you just stalling, because you know I’m about to win yet again?”

“You two have been clearly doing the nasty,” Jesse said, “And the emphasis is on the nasty.” He tossed a blue ‘1’ on to the deck. “Isn’t there some kind of law against old people getting it on? I thought they told my granny that at the nursing home when some old man named Gerald kept sending flowers to her room.”

Walt rolled his eyes and didn’t reply, instead pausing to take a sip of water from the glass in front of him. 

“But seriously, Mr. White, you do look a lot happier now. Just like… don’t send me any pictures or nothing. I don’t need that scarred into my forehead until the end of time.”

Walt threw down a yellow ‘1’. 

“Uno,” he declared. “Pay up.”

Jesse grumbled and threw three Tootsie Rolls at him.

***

The next day, Walt came to the lab with a bottle of Moet et Chandon Imperial. 

“For us,” he said, “After we finish for the day.” He smiled. 

Gale’s fingers fiddled with the controls on the coffee machine. He had this way about him of looking almost as if he was in some sort of daze when Walt looked at him, as if that inscription – “my star, my perfect silence” – were quite true. As if Walt was some sort of man-made wonder, created for Gale to gawk at, but mainly from afar. As if Walt was still able to knock him that little bit off-balance. 

Walt wasn’t sure what exactly made him feel awkward at that thought, but he needed suddenly to bridge the gap.

“What’s the occasion?” Gale inquired, his eyes traveling from Walt’s boots, up the protective suit, and lingering on Walt’s face, at his eyes.

“Our three-month anniversary of working together,” Walt replied. He placed the bottle in one of the lockers and headed straight towards Gale.

He wondered what Gus thought of all of this, in all of his unflappability. Whether, perhaps, he had planned this. If he had, well, it had worked.

But there was little time to sit and think about Gus – that was boring and practical and what he was feeling now was straight adrenaline. 

“Or do you prefer something else? A Chardonnay maybe?” Walt continued, a side step here, a short two-step shuffle there, heading to the settling tank and over to the boiler, letting Gale trail him a few steps behind.

“I celebrate it all,” Gale replied, “My favorite, though… well, I’m a big fan of saki. If you… come across some that needs a good home.” He chuckled, and Walt did too. “Oh, and Count Coreth. I had that when I was in Bangkok. It was otherworldly.” Gale closed his eyes a moment, and seemed to be picturing the smell and taste of the wine. For a few moments, Walt let him. 

“We had better get to work. The sooner in, the sooner we can crack this bad boy.” He could almost hear the cork pop already.

***

“Gus must be stone-cold confident to be sending us to this type of thing. What does he think people might do if he sees us out in public?” Walt would be pacing, if only he had the proper room to do so. Instead, he was trapped in a particularly ornate chair. 

Gale looked over at Walt with a doe-eyed gaze.

“Think about how lucky we are. This is a thousand dollar a plate dinner,” Gale replied, picking up one of the tiny forks.

“I think that’s the dessert one, actually,” Walt interjected.

Gale placed it down and picked up another, looking at Walt for approval. He nodded.

“You must have experience at this type of dinner?” Gale inquired, leaning forward, hanging on every word.

“Well, there was a trip to Zurich for a conference in graduate school…” Walt began. “But you don’t want to hear me wax poetic about the old days.” Or think about what a blowhard his advisor had been, or the way everyone in the group had tried to claim Walt’s work as their own despite spending the better part the summer catching the surf rather than studying.

“That, Walt,” Gale replied, “Is entirely incorrect. I want to hear about the old days, the new days…”

“The blue days,” Walt chimed in.

“Well those are the ones we’re in right now,” Gale replied. “Cheers.” He raised his glass.

“Cheers.”

***

Walt’s fingers fumbled over the buttons on his phone as he stepped out of the taxi, headed towards the condo. The condo that no longer felt quite so empty 

He wavered a bit, nearly lunging towards his walkway as he typed:   
_Gale,  
It was a lovely night and I wanted to thank you for being a part of it.  
You will have to tell me all about Thailand the next time we have a night out.  
\- W. W._

Walt’s phone buzzed as turned his key in his lock, but he didn’t read it until he had stepped into the condo:

_Wrong number Mr. White! Also ur super gay. Congrats. Whens the wedding_

Walt texted back:  
 _Perhaps June 23rd. Mole Day._

He pocketed his phone and chuckled as it buzzed, probably with Jesse trying to figure out what the hell Mole Day was. Maybe Walt should have taken it easy on him and just said it would be on Pi Day, but it might not have helped. Either way, it was bound to be a nice day tomorrow.


End file.
